Global Member Summit – iMasons “Leading the Charge” on Climate Change

Thanks to those who joined us on Earth Day to make a difference and be part of the solution

iMasons hosted our first interactive on-line Global Member Summit on April 22nd, Earth Day.  Summit attendees participated in the development of a plan to neutralize the environmental impact of inevitable growth.

To accommodate and gather input from the growing number of iMasons members around the world – iMasons will be hosting 3 x Global Member Summits. The first session was held in the Americas on April 22nd, with the APAC session scheduled for May 21st and EMEA on May 28th. (All iM Members are welcome to attend each / all). 

During this online and highly interactive meeting, iMasons shared the Sustainability Strategy developed by iM Hyperscale End Users in March 2020 and leveraged the collective brain power of the iM Digital Infrastructure Community to tackle our most complex challenge yet – a plan to neutralize the environmental impact of inevitable growth.

The Summit served as the “Lift Off” event to a sustainable digital future. Between us, we can make the digital infrastructure industry carbon neutral by 2030 and you can help develop the industry Action Plan that will be shared during the UN Sustainability Summit in September 2020.

To learn more about the iMasons Sustainability Vision and the 5 initiatives for achieving “every click improves the future”, check out our blog post. You can also watch the 90 second recap video below.

Agenda

In typical iMasons fashion, the event included a mix of stellar speakers and opportunities for attendees to contribute their experience and perspective – without any sales pitches.

Sessions included:

Kate Brandt, Google Sustainability Officer
Kate leads sustainability across Google’s worldwide operations, products and supply chain. Prior to joining Google, Kate was appointed by president Obama to be the nation’s first Federal Chief Sustainability Officer.

Check out the full video of Kate’s session above, as well as the blog recap.

Noelle Walsh-Elwell, Corporate VP at Microsoft
Noelle leads the team that builds and operates Microsoft’s digital infrastructure worldwide, which includes more than 160 datacenters, one million miles of fiber, 175 edge sites and more than four million servers, networking devices and other machines. Her team is also responsible for sustainability and R&D – focused on helping the industry grow more responsibly and sustainably.

Check out the full video of Noelle’s session above, as well as the blog recap.

Panelists: Uniting on a Common Industry Vision

iMasons founder and chairman Dean Nelson facilitated a lively conversation with Christian Belady, GM of Data Center Services at Microsoft; Joe Kava, VP of Data Centers at Google; Rachel Peterson, VP of Data Center Strategy at Facebook; and Eddie Schutter, CTO at Switch. Dean collected thoughts on the Infrastructure Masons’ new sustainability vision “Every click improves the future” and how we can all collectively work together to achieve industry sustainability goals.

Check out the full video of the panel session above, as well as the blog recap.

Growth in Digital Infrastructure Will Continue to Accelerate – What About the Environmental Impact?

At the iMason’s End User Summit (October 2019) End Users (representing +$100 billion of digital infrastructure spend) predicted 39x growth in the next 10 years (suppliers 10x) – The huge growth in digital infrastructure will continue to accelerate well into the future.

Next Steps After the Global Member Summit

The outputs from the Global Member Summits will be exercised and developed by the global iMasons community into an Action Plan with progress shared publicly during the UN 75th Anniversary – Global UN Sustainability Summit in September 2020.